[v] As a German classical scholar remarked (I think in "Hermes") some years ago, the methods of Biblical criticism are coming to be a jest among philologists. This book is a protest in the name of history and of literature against the revival of a method in criticism which I had supposed to be antiquated and discredited.

To the ordinary Classical scholar it seems almost a crime to place at wrong dates, and attribute to anonymous and fictitious authors, writings of the highest value as historical authorities and as works of literature. It is a duty to raise one’s voice against such a theory. That [vi] the most powerful and lasting movement of the human mind originated in the Church's misunderstanding of a simple person, and was nursed in the "pseudonymous" composition of legend or half-legend about him, is a theory against which I hope always to contend. As soon persuade me that the "great renunciation" of Buddha is a legend! But Buddhism never became a "religion of the Book," and the power of Christianity lies in the Book (as Mohammedans say).

The present work is an enlargement of a series of articles which were written for the most part in trains and hotels, among the excavations by the American scholars at Sardis and under the shadow of Lycaonian hills.